Issue:

There is an architectural constraint with the Dell Update Package (DUP) HDD firmware update utility, related to system memory utilization, which is typically encountered on systems with minimal system memory, memory-intensive configurations (multiple RAID controllers), or memory-intensive applications.

This issue is typically reported as "The operation was not successful because the device buffer write has failed" and will result in an aborted attempt to update firmware on the identified HDD.

Error codes associated with this failure mode include 8009 and 8017.

Solution:

The aborted attempt to flash the hard drive firmware will not affect the drive. It will stay at its current firmware level.

There is no data integrity or data availability risk associated with this issue.

This error is most likely to be seen when running Windows 2008 server with less than 8GB of memory. However, it is possible to run into the problem on servers that have more than 8GB of memory and servers running Windows 2003.

Subsequent attempts to update the HDD firmware may succeed, particularly if system resources are freed up. Booting from the System Build and Update Utility (SBUU) CD to flash offline may also address resource limitations in lean memory servers, by booting into a minimal environment. Booting into Safe Mode will free up sufficient resources to use the online DUP. Optionally, the Nautilus HDD firmware update utility has no such limitations.

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